What once ensured that I sat at a table next to the teacher is now posted, Monday through Friday.

I've contributed to perhaps the best humor compilation I've ever read. Available now on Amazon!

My second chapbook, "The Second Book of Pearl: The Cats" is now available as either a paper chapbook or as a downloadable item. See below for the Pay Pal link or click on its cover just to the right of the newest blog post to download to your Kindle, iPad, or Nook. Just $3.99 for inspired tales of gin, gambling addiction and inter-feline betrayal.

My first chapbook, I Was Raised to be A Lert is in its third printing and is available both via the PayPal link below and on smashwords! Order one? Download one? It's all for you, baby!

Friday, June 20, 2014

Inside My Head, It’s Warm and Dry

Having been forecast to begin raining at 5:00, the clouds
oblige; and at 5:04, it comes down, raindrops the size of dinner plates.

The general downtown population responds as if martial
law has been declared; and a couple in a vehicle the size of a team of
Clydesdales, lured by the seduction of a yellow light, has wandered into a ped-xing
zone, where they find themselves engulfed in pedestrians, all of whom are
thinking of hitting their hood with an umbrella but don’t.

We board our buses, slightly moistened.The man who sits down next to me, a
perpetually unsmiling, grizzled sort I’ve seen every work day for at least five
years, promptly closes his eyes.

It’s been raining for days.The sky hangs low and heavy; and the
Mississippi River rushes to meet it, throwing itself over the falls near the
bridge and up into the air in a mist that mingles with the clouds.

On both sides of the bus, we turn to watch.One day frozen over, one day free of ice,
time is marked by the river.

The river is wide,
I think.

Pleased with this thought, I turn to my seatmate, then
quickly turn away.He is sleeping, and I
am struck by this intimacy.

I steal another look. Eyes closed, face slack, he is vulnerable and
touchingly human. It’s just me and this guy on the bus, I
think.We’re going to make it work, whatever it takes.